East Grand School District’s Board of Education is currently contemplating a pair of multi-million dollar capital improvement projects and the various funding mechanisms the district might use to cover project costs.File photo / Lance Maggart

East Grand School District’s Board of Education has a
difficult decision to make, and they have less than a fortnight to do it.

The local government body has spent the last several weeks
contemplating and reviewing different funding options for pair of projects the
district is currently eyeing: a safety and security improvement project and a facilities
improvement project. The two projects are technically separate however, due to
a unique dynamic involving the timing of a state grant and upcoming election
cycles, school board members are contemplating both projects, and their
respective funding mechanisms in tandem.

The first and most pressing issue before the board is a
potential safety and security project connected to a BEST grant. BEST grants
are a specific category of competitive grant offered to school districts by the
state of Colorado. In May East Grand was awarded a $2.1 million BEST grant to
be applied to safety and security related capital improvement projects in the
district. The award comes with stipulations though and East Grand School
District must come up with $5.9 million to leverage the BEST grant dollars.

The safety and security project would primarily be focused
on physical construction efforts at East Grand Middle School and Fraser Valley
Elementary, beefing up security measures at the entryways for those buildings.
According to East Grand Superintendent Frank Reeves roughly 75% of the expenses
related to the safety and security improvement project would be devoted to
those construction projects with the remainder going towards new classroom
locks, exterior key fob systems and additional security camera improvements.

In addition to the safety and security project East Grand is
also contemplating a much broader capital improvement project that would be
focused on the district’ facilities as a whole, and not specifically on
security related concerns. The idea for the facility improvement project
developed out of the district’s recent master planning process, which
identified numerous specific needs within the district’s facilities.

District officials have not yet developed a potential cost
range for the capital improvement project. Instead they plan to spend the next
school year conducting a series of State of the District meetings with community
members and property owners laying out the needs outlined in the
master-planning document. District officials hope to develop a set of
priorities and goals from those meetings based on public feedback.

“What is the will of the voters?” Superintendent Frank Reeves
asked. “What are the voters willing to accept? We will present the needs to the
community and find out what the votes want based on that. There is no sense in
building a bond question that has no chance of passing.”

Tuesday night East Grand’s Board of Education heard a
presentation from representatives of the Britz Company, a Denver based public
affairs consulting firm that specializes in school district related campaigns. The
presentation was a crash-course of sorts in school district political campaigns
and focused on a number of complex issues from voter turnout demographics and
voter fatigue to the advantages and disadvantages of the various funding
options how those efforts would potentially play out.

Representatives from the Britz Company discussed various
funding options, the benefits and drawbacks of each and the general political
campaign strategy the district would look to employ when presenting any funding
questions to voters.

To secure funding for the projects East Grand could look to
three different options: a GO Bond, a Certificate of Participation or a Mill
Levy Override. Under the GO Bond option East Grand would go to the voters of
Grand County and ask them to approve the issuance of a bond by the district
that would be repaid over time. Under the Certificate of Participation option
East Grand would essentially borrow money to cover costs related to projects
without seeking voter approval. Certificates of Participation, often called COPs,
are typically used as an interim funding mechanism and often result in bond
requests or requests for a Mill Levy Override to cover the borrowed funds.

The Mill Levy Override option would involve asking voters to
approve such an action, which would allow the district to “override” the state’s
school finace act and obtain additional funding for operational needs.

According to Reeves the district must respond to the state
of Colorado regarding their plans for the BEST grant no later than July 1, or
the district could lose the grant funds. As such the East Grand Board of
Education will need to make a decision at their final meeting of June to
determine their strategy for approaching the funding questions.

As they approach the issue of the BEST grant board members
essentially have three different options.

“We could go through the COP route,” Reeves said. “We could
try and pass a bond this November, or we can turn the grant down and try again
for it in 2020.”

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